Cllr. Frankie Keena said this week that he was deeply saddened with the pending closure of the Nexan Company in Athlone this week. "It is the end of a milestone of employment at this fine plant in Cornamaddy. This building was built in the early seventies and the first company to locate there was Cable & Wire. This was followed by Alcatel and then Nexans," he said.
"Over the 35 years or so this facility provided valuable employment to hundreds of people in the Midlands. "With the closure of the Nexans plant 94 people will be loosing their jobs in the Athlone and surrounding areas. This will have a major impact on the economy in Athlone. I am very upset and concerned for these people as they have families to support and mortages to repay" he said.
"Nexans were good employers who looked after their employees well and it will be difficult for these people to find similar employment offering the same conditions. There seems to be a sense of acceptance and inevitability that Nexans is closing, because when they announced this news last Spring there was no major call on the IDA to find replacement jobs. There was very little public outcry about this closure. I am annoyed about this for two reasons," said Cllr. Keena. "The first is that these people who have been working at this facility for a long number of years are losing their jobs in a time of uncertainty and secondly this is a huge loss to the economy of Athlone," he added. "Every effort needs to be made to replace these jobs with sustainable employment.
It is time that the IDA informed us as to where employment can be sourced for these people some of whom are in their 30s, some in their 40s and some in their 50s," explained Cllr. Keena.
